This invention relates to a printing apparatus which receives ink from a replaceable ink cartridge and ejects ink droplets through nozzle openings to carry out printing on a record medium. This invention also relates to an ink cartridge mountable to the printing apparatus.
An ink jet printing apparatus includes a print head and an ink cartridge that contains ink to be supplied to the print head. The print head is typically constructed such that a drive signal is fed to a piezoelectric vibrator, a heating system, etc. in response to print data to pressurize supplied ink by energy generated by the piezoelectric vibrator, the heating system, etc., thereby ejecting ink droplets through nozzle openings.
The print quality depends not only on the resolution of the print head and but also largely on the viscosity of ink, the degree of ink spread on a record medium, etc. Therefore, in order to improve the print quality, various attempts have been made for obtaining an optimal ink characteristic, and an optimal driver for the print head, which is optimized to characteristic of the currently used ink or the improved ink. Further, optimal maintenance conditions have been considered with respect to a period of idle ejection, application of forcible ink ejection in a capping state, etc. to prevent clogging of the nozzle openings.
It is, however, not guaranteed that a user can fully enjoy the initial and intended performance of the ink cartridge thus carefully designed by the manufacturer because the ink cartridge may be used in different ways depending on environments of the individual user.
It is, therefore, an object of the invention to provide an ink jet printing apparatus that can conform to how a user uses an ink cartridge.
It is another object of the invention to provide an ink cartridge adapted to the ink jet printing apparatus.
To attain the above-noted and other objects, the present invention provides an ink jet printing apparatus and/or an ink cartridge, which is characterized by a storage system that can store therein data on operation history of a cleaning system.
On the basis of the data stored in the storage system, the printing apparatus can recognize a manner of how an ink cartridge was used by a user, and/or conform to how the user uses the ink cartridge.
If the ink cartridge with the data stored in the storage system is collected or returned to the manufacturer, the use state of the ink cartridge and the operation state of the printing apparatus can recognized precisely based on the data concerning cleaning stored in the storage system added to the ink cartridge.
An ink jet printing apparatus according to a preferred embodiment of the invention includes: an ink jet print head that receives ink from an ink cartridge provided with a rewritable storage system, a cleaning system that recovers an ink droplet ejecting capability of the print head, and a system that reads and writes data from and onto the storage system, wherein the storage system has an area capable of storing therein data on operation history of the cleaning system. Therefore, the ink cartridge that is significantly advantageous in portability in comparison to the printing apparatus can be collected easily, and the use state of the ink cartridge can be recognized precisely based on the data stored in the storage system. Advice about appropriate steps to be taken can be given to the customer in response to complaint of the customer. The performance of the printing apparatus and the ink cartridge in actual use can be investigated to be fed back into development and design.
The present disclosure relates to the subject matter contained in Japanese patent application Nos. Hei. 10-314889 (filed on Nov. 5, 1998) and 11-275808 (filed on Sep. 29, 1999), which are expressly incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.